Get Off Our Side!

That must be the Democrats’ reaction to the new videotape by al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri. Much as Osama bin Laden’s video, released just before the 2004 election, embarrassed Democrats’ by its close tracking with their talking points as articulated in Fahrenheit 9/11, down to My Pet Goat, Zawahiri’s latest shows a keen awareness of the Democrats’ election themes. I haven’t been able to find a full transcript, but this site has a little more information than most:

To U.S. President George W. Bush, Zawahiri brands him a “deceitful charlatan” and liar, and questions: “why don’t you tell them how many million citizens of America and it’s allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people’s sons in order to increase your profits?”

No blood for oil!

He questions his motives for initating the War in Iraq, ridiculing the false prexets under which it was conducted. To this end he cites the purported links of Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, and the presence of weapons of mass destruction. He also addresses the capture of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and questions that if it helped in the “war on terror” then “why are your troops retreating in secret from the south and east of Afghanistan?

Zawahiri knows that because of the incompetence (or worse) of American journalists, he can ridicule the idea of connections between al Qaeda and Iraq, even though he himself attended, according to multiple reports, a conference of Islamic extremists in Baghdad in 1999.

It’s interesting to think about the possible explanations for the fact that al Qaeda’s leaders believe that their most effective public relations strategy is to repeat the Democratic Party’s talking points.